Art
Artists
Reflecting on my practice process
Rene Magritte
The subject: the ideas of darkness and lightness
Key takeaways : the symbolism, atmosphere, an imaginary space
In my practices, while the representation of darkness and lightness dose not distinguish contrast clearly, it reminds me of Rene Magritte’s painting which which depicts the relationship with the unconscious with the ideas about these elements.
In Empire of Light, numerous versions of which exist (see, for example, those at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels), a dark, nocturnal street scene is set against a pastel-blue, light-drenched sky spotted with fluffy cumulus clouds. With no fantastic element other than the single paradoxical combination of day and night, René Magritte upsets a fundamental organizing premise of life. Sunlight, ordinarily the source of clarity, here causes the confusion and unease traditionally associated with darkness. The luminosity of the sky becomes unsettling, making the empty darkness below even more impenetrable than it would seem in a normal context. The bizarre subject is treated in an impersonal, precise style, typical of veristic Surrealist painting and preferred by Magritte since the mid-1920s.
(Reference: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum website )
“The Meaning of Night disturbs in the way it portrays the fear of what happens at night, especially in that darkness that lies within all humans, and our sleeping shadow selves that come alive after we close our eyes in the dark.”
René Magritte
Empire of Light (L'empire des lumières),Oil on canvas,76 15/16 x 51 5/8 inches (195.4 x 131.2 cm),1953–54
Le seize septembre, Oil on canvas,(115 x 88 cm),1957
The Banquet,Oil on canvas,97.3 × 130.3 cm,1958
Gerhard Richter
Key takeaways: flatten , distancing ,imprecision , uncertainty , memory , blurring, unconsciousness, composition
What is a blur? It's a corruption of an image, an assault upon its clarity,the blur serves as a perfect general metaphor for memory,
"I blur to make everything equal, everything equally important and equally unimportant,"
(Gerhard Richter)
"Their horror," Richter says, "is the horror of the hard-to-bear refusal to answer, to explain, to give an opinion." The pictures, ultra-loaded as they are, reject any attempt to bring their subject matter into focus along perspectival lines of ideology or pathos or transcendence.
(Gerhard Richter)
(Reference:https://amp.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/sep/22/gerhard-richter-tate-retrospective-panorama)
Gerhard Richter, Uncle Rudi, 1965, oil on canvas, 34 ¼ × 19 ¾ inches (87 × 50 cm), CR: 85
Gerhard Richter, Herr Heyde, 1965, oil on canvas, 21 ⅝ × 25 ⅝ inches (55 × 65 cm), CR: 100
Gerhard Richter, Aunt Marianne, 1965, oil on canvas, 39 ¾ × 45 ¼ inches (100 × 115 cm), CR: 87
Gerhard Richter, Liegestuhl Il (Deck Chair IN), 1965,Oil on canvas, 39 ⅜ × 78 ¾ inches (100 × 200 cm)
© Gerard Richter
Peter Doig
Peter Doig, Grande Riviere, 2001-2002, courtesy of Victoria Miro
Swamped, oil on canvas. 1990, by peter doig
Swamped: Inspired by a scene from horror film Friday the 13th, first screened in 1980
Tunnel Painting (Country-rock)” 2000’ on the reverseoil on canvas,40.5 x 30.5 cm (15 7/8 x 12 in.) in 2000
Country Rock, from 100 Years Ago series ,Oil on canvas, 2001-2002
Country Rock, from 100 Years Ago,27 3/8 x 39 1/8 inches,Photo-etching and aquatint, 2001-2002
The subject: the way to approach a visual resource drawing from a photograph and memory
Key takeaways :
It is not a landscape which is imagined or remembered, neither is it telling a direct story. In the darkness, the situation become enigmatic.
Whether it’s a photographic or descriptive approach, a painting can depict an alternative world to real photography.
As individual components, the elements in my work do not hold any special meaning.
In his paintings, the forest, the water, and the darkness are expressed in blue colours.
Doig’s work shows us how far we have come, and how distantly we look back across a chasm at painting, the gulf being photography. The critical commentary on his painting and the interviews conducted with him are an index. First, he paints images with at least umbilical attachments to the so-called real world.
(Reference: Tate Museum)
It demands attention because it conveys the liberation of “tapping into something that is personal rather than anything else.” (Peter Doig)
There’s so much to look at, and yet it’s so empty and so vague in what it’s depicting,” he says. “It’s so brave in its division of space, and it constantly confuses you because you don’t know really what you’re looking at. It seems to be a constantly questioning painting and, in many ways, incomplete.” (Peter Doig )
Claude Monet
CLAUDE MONET
1.Nymphéas, oil on canvas,1916-1919, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
CLAUDE MONET
2. Coin de l'étang à Giverny, oil on canvas,1917Musée de Peinture et de Sculpture, Grenoble, don de 'artiste en 1923
CLAUDE MONET
Les Agapanthes, oil on canvas,1916-1919, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
CLAUDE MONET
Le Bassin aux nymphéas, oil on canvas, 1917-1919, Private collection
CLAUDE MONET
Nymphéas avec reflets de hautes herbes, oil on canvas, 1897, Nahmad Collection
CLAUDE MONET
Nymphéas, étude, oil on canvas, 1907,Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
Reflect on the exhibition: "Monet - Mitchell" at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris on October in 2022
Key subjects: colours , transformed feeling or sensation
Key takeaways: impression, sensation, the persistence of visual sensation , the memory of an emotion evoked by contact with nature
Monet and Michel have different way to approach reflection on the materiality of the colour between immediately sensation and feeling of memory. The two artists sought to fix a sensation or a feeling, that is, the memory of an emotion evoked by contact with nature and transformed by the memory. I focused on how they employed the numerous hues of blues to transcribe the memory.
The exhibitions "Monet - Mitchell" create an unprecendented "dialogue" between the works of two exceptional artists, Claude Monet (1840-1926) and Joan Mitchell (1925-1992). "Claude Monet - Joan Mitchell, Dialogue" will be introduce by the "Joan Mitchell, Retrospective", enabling the public in France and Europe to discover her work.The "Monet - Mitchell" exhibitions present each artist’s unique response to a landscape and nature, illustrated in a particularly immersive manner. In his last paintings, the Water Lilies, Monet aimed to recreate in his studio the motifs he observed at length on the surface of his water lily pond in Giverny. Joan Mitchell, on the other hand, would explore a memory or a sense of the emotions she felt while in a particular place that was dear to her, perceptions that remained vivid beyond space and time. She would create these abstract compositions at La Tour, her studio in Vétheuil, a small French village.
(Reference : Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris)
(Photos taken by myself on "Monet - Mitchell" exhibition on Foundation Louis Vuitton in Paris)
JOAN MITCHELL
Sans titre | Untitled, 1955,Oil on canvas
Collection particulière | Private collection
JOAN MITCHELL
Quatuor Il for Betsy Jolas, 1976, Oil on canvas, Centre Pompidou, Paris. Muse national d'art moderne
JOAN MITCHELL,Mon paysage, 1967
Oil on canvas,Fondation Marguerite & Aim Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence
JOAN MITCHELL,Edrita Fried, 1981,Oil on canvas,New York. Joan Mitchell Foundation
Joan Mitchell
Key subjects: colours , transcribed memory reflection on colours, being abstract, brushstrokes.
Key takeaways: feeling from her memories, transformed by the memory.
Joan Mitchell: Paintings, 1979–1985
My paintings repeat a feeling about Lake Michigan, or water, or fields... It’s more like a poem... and that’s what I want to paint.”
JOAN MITCHELL, IN FILM "JOAN MITCHELL: PORTRAIT OF AN ABSTRACT PAINTER"
( Reference: Joan Mitchell Foundation )
“The years 1979 to 1986 swelled with ambition—for art, not career—and the achievement in her work manifested a metaphysical depth born of a life surveyed, prompted, but not determined, by loss and death…. Mitchell's paintings reached a new expanse, even as she grew more present in and anchored to the concrete details of her life.”
—Katy Siegel, Research Director, Special Program Initiatives, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2021
Joan Mitchell established a singular visual vocabulary over the course of her more than four-decade career. While rooted in the conventions of abstraction, Mitchell’s inventive reinterpretation of the traditional figure-ground relationship and remarkable adeptness with color set her apart from her peers and resulted in intuitively constructed and emotionally charged compositions that alternately conjure individuals, observations, places, and points in time.
( Reference: David Zwirner)
(Photos taken by myself on "Monet - Mitchell" exhibition on Foundation Louis Vuitton in Paris)
Silke otto- knapp
The subjects: discussion on the material nature of my practice.
Key takeaways:the utilisation of watercolour, the application of pigments, the experimentations of material.
Otto-Knapp has developed a unique style of watercolour painting. She paints forms and figures by applying layers of watercolour paint to a canvas and then carefully washes them away. The pigment from the paint floats on the surface. Otto-Knapp moves the separated pigment so it settles in other areas of the canvas. As she repeats the process, layers build up, creating a dark background. The outline of her erased images gradually emerges in contrast to this background. Otto-Knapp then uses brushes, sponges or her fingers to control the variation between light and dark, defining the figures more clearly.
(Reference: Tate Museum)
Silke Otto-Knapp White lilac, 2009 watercolour on canvas 140 x 120 cm Photo: Marcus Leith Courtesy of greengrassi, London
Silke Otto-Knapp White lilac, 2009 watercolour on canvas 140 x 120 cm Photo: Marcus Leith Courtesy of greengrassi, London
Silke Otto-Knapp, Islands, 2013. Watercolour on canvas, 140 x 160 cm. Photo: Anders Sune Berg. Courtesy of greengrassi, London.
Grey Garden, 2003,watercolor on canvas,32 x 38 in. (82 x 96 cm),acquired in 2004
Wanda Koop
The subjects: discussion on the material nature of my practice; colour , symbolism.
Key takeaways: the utilising colour of a psychological way, the figuration of moon.
“Color had certain parameters to it when I was in art school. Neon colors used to be garish. But over time I saw the use of color expand and I started thinking about it differently. I use color in a very psychologic"
(Wanda Koop)
Wanda Koop (b. 1951, Vancouver, Canada) has been painting for four decades, and was showcased in a major survey of her work mounted by the National Gallery of Canada in 2011. She has exhibited across Canada and the U.S. as well as in Europe, Asia, and South America. In 2019, The Dallas Museum of Art presented "Concentrations 61: Dreamline," Koop's first major solo museum exhibition in the United States. Koop has been the recipient of numerous awards, honorary doctorates, and Canadian medals of honor, including the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Order of Canada, in 2006. Her life and work have been the subject of several documentary films. She lives and works in Winnipeg, Canada.
(Reference: a website on Night Gallery)
Super Flower Blood Moon, 2021
Hunters Moon, acrylic on canvas,84 x 60 in (213.4 x 152.4 cm) ,Wanda Koop,2022
Luna, acrylic on canvas,48 x 36 in (121.9 x 91.4 cm),2021
Dreamline (Seeway), acrylic on canvas, 2019
Dreamline (River), acrylic on canvas, 2019
(The images on night gallery's website and photos taken by myself from Frieze London in 2022 )
To reference bibliography
The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation. (n.d.). Empire of Light. [online] Available at: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/2594.
Image on a Museum Website, © 2018 C. Herscovici, London/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
www.rene-magritte.com. (n.d.). The Meaning of Night by Rene Magritte. [online] Available at: https://www.rene-magritte.com/meaning-of-night/ [Accessed 6.Nov. 2022].
Gagosian Quarterly. (2020). Gerhard Richter | Essay. [online] Available at: https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2020/11/23/essay-young-gerd-richter/ [Accessed 8 Nov. 2022].
McCarthy T. (2011). Blurred visionary: Gerhard Richter's photo-paintings. The Guardian, 22nd September. Available at: https://amp.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/sep/22/gerhard-richter-tate-retrospective-panorama
Rexer, L. (n.d.). Taking the most extreme liberties to fashion an alternative world: Peter Doig – Tate Etc. [online] Tate. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/tate-etc/issue-12-spring-2008/taking-most-extreme-liberties-fashion-alternative-world.
www.michaelwerner.com. (n.d.). Weird places, Strange folk: The ghostly memories and references of Peter Doig - Frieze - Gareth Jones - News - Michael Werner Gallery, New York and London. [online] Available at: https://www.michaelwerner.com/news/weird-places-strange-folk-the-ghostly-memories-and-references-of-peter-doig [Accessed 29.Oct. 2022].
W Magazine. (n.d.). A Guided Preview of New Peter Doig Show by Peter Doig. [online] Available at: https://www.wmagazine.com/gallery/new-peter-doig-exhibition/amp [Accessed 11 Nov. 2022].
Fondation Louis Vuitton. (2022). Monet - Mitchell. [online] Available at: https://www.fondationlouisvuitton.fr/en/events/claude-monet-joan-mitchell [Accessed 5 Nov. 2022].
David Zwirner. (n.d.). Joan Mitchell: Paintings, 1979–1985. [online] Available at: https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2022/joan-mitchell-paintings-1979-1985?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_content=ad1&utm_campaign=JoMDZ20SHOW2022&gclid=Cj0KCQiAsdKbBhDHARIsANJ6-jdJRJj2i9u1r2lQU2dbw9JWRXdtEG86fIHYO3A5vfZHZ_-7cGkpt54aAhw4EALw_wcB [Accessed 3 Nov. 2022].
Joan Mitchell Foundation. (n.d.). About Joan Mitchell. [online] Available at: https://www.joanmitchellfoundation.org/joan-mitchell.
Tate (n.d.). Art Now: Silke Otto-Knapp | Tate Britain. [online] Tate. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/art-now-silke-otto-knapp [Accessed 6 Nov. 2022].
Images references on websites: Camden Arts Centre and Rubell Museum Miami:
rubellmuseum.org. (n.d.). Silke Otto-Knapp. [online] Available at: https://rubellmuseum.org/nml-silke-otto-knapp [Accessed 2,Oct. 2022].
www.nightgallery.ca. (n.d.). Wanda Koop - Artists - Night Gallery. [online] Available at: https://www.nightgallery.ca/artists/wanda-koop [Accessed 12. Nov. 2022].
Images on night gallery's website and taken by Frieze London in October,2022
Office Magazine. (2018). The Colorful Activism of Wanda Koop. [online] Available at: http://officemagazine.net/colorful-activism-wanda-koop [Accessed 3.Nov. 2022].